One follow-up to this post: Both in this Politico whack at Gorsuch (which I had forgotten about) and in his San Francisco Daily Journal piece, Erwin Chemerinsky writes:

In deciding whether to filibuster, Democrats should remember that there were 48 votes against Clarence Thomas and 42 votes against Samuel Alito. They could have been blocked by filibusters, and it was a huge mistake that Democrats did not do so.

Does Chemerinsky really not recall that, with his urging, Democrats tried to filibuster the Alito nomination but failed (on a cloture vote of 72 to 25)? Is he really so clueless about the political process to think that a senator’s vote against a nomination means that he would necessarily also vote to filibuster that nomination?